Viewpoints on the Russo-Japanese War

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries world politics was dominated by the nations of Europe: Great Britain, France, Spain, Russia, etc. This domination was challenged however within the first few years of the twentieth century by the country of Japan. Japan had existed in a state of self-imposed isolation from the world for nearly two-hundred and fifty years until it was forcibly opened to foreign trade by an American Naval Armada. At that point Japan began to rapidly modernize its economy, infrastructure, military, government, and many other aspects of its culture. This grew to a point that Japan was even able to shrug off western control and challenge one of them to a military showdown. This was the conflict known as the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Though many historians overlook the conflict due to its proximity to several other major world shattering events, including the First World War, the Russo-Japanese War cannot be ignored due to several very notable facts that surround it.

The fact that this war was the first conflict in which an Asian power challenged and defeated one of the supposedly invincible European empires is highly notable. The fact that this conflict served as an example of the amazing speed with which Japan had modernized itself in the forty some odd years since its opening to foreign trade. The fact that this war served as one of the first stepping stones for Japan's rise as a world power. The Russo-Japanese War's causes and outcome are something to be examined and which has been done. Here in this article are the views of two historians who have examined this event nearly seventy years apart. Dr. K. Asakawa who wrote about the war as it was happening in his book The Russo-Japanese War: Its Causes and Issues which was published in 1904 and Shumpei Okamoto who wrote and published the book The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War in 1970. These two books will be examined in their views on the events leading up to the war; what causes were instrumental in starting the conflict and over what were they truly fighting?

Dr. Asakawa's book sets forth in great historical depth the roots of this conflict in the unfair Western trade treaties forced on Japan shortly after its opening. Dr. Asakawa it appears believed that the Russo-Japanese War was the end result of the European powers meddling in Japan's affairs as the old saying goes "You reap what you sow". Okamoto apparently believes that the war's roots, though a result of European meddling, in the small group of men who controlled Japan's government and military. This oligarchy planned this event as a show of what their country was capable of and also as a means of expanding Japan's influence over territory that they believed was meant for use by Japan. Okamoto lists the men of this cabinet as the following: Marquis Ito Hirobumi, Field Marshal Marquis Yamagata Aritomo, Count Matsukata Masayoshi, Count Inoue Kaoru, and Field Marshal Marquis Oyama Iwao. These five individuals made a council that was known as the Genrô.

Both Asakawa and Okamoto do agree however on what one of the more defining issues that started the war was. This was the status of the Liao-Tung peninsula. The Laio-Tung peninsula is a narrow strip of land that just out from Manchuria into Korea Bay. At the very tip of the peninsula is the city of Port Arthur. Japan had gained the peninsula and Port Arthur as a prize stemming from Sino-Japanese War. However Japan was not able to keep the new territory due to pressure from the European powers. Both authors agree on the events that involve the peninsula. The Russian Empire was in search of a warm water port on the Pacific coast to station its Pacific fleet at. At the time the fleet was stationed at the port city of Vladivostok which is actually frozen over and blocked off for most of the year. Russia saw Port Arthur as the perfect place for this. Using the backing of the various treaties signed between the Western nations and Japan, Russia was able to apply enough pressure to force Japan to relinquish the territory. The Japanese government was not at all pleased with these events. Seeing a coveted and hard earned territory ripped away from them in such a manner was not something the Japanese were going to let go of easily.

The gap in years between these two writers also gives an intresting contrast between these historians. At the time that Asakawa wrote his book the Japanese government was being very carefully in limiting what the public did and did not know about the war in an effort to prevent a negative fall out in public opinion. However Okamoto was not affected by this restriction given the fact that his book was written approximately sixty-six years after Asakawa's book. Okamoto even mentions this fear by the Japanese government with an excerpt of Tokutomi Sohô's autobiography:

"The Japanese authorities were more afraid of their own people than of the enemy. Only the officials in the government knew of the various internal weaknesses and overall vulnerability of the nation. They kept their knowledge strictly secret lest it have an adverse effect upon the morale of the people.[1]"

Okamoto appears to be of the opinion that the Japanese government was afraid that if the general public was aware of the conflict and the events leading to it that they would face widespread unrest and dissention that could bring down this so called oligarchy within the government. Dr. Asakawa on the other hand makes almost no reference at all to this fear. Though at the time that Dr, Asakawa was writing his book this information was not available to him due to the fact that he researched and wrote his book during the war. Okamoto had the advantage of researching government records and the biographies of former government officials that had become available in the decades following the end of the conflict.

The Russo-Japanese War is a great event in world history. Not only was it a series of watershed events that signal the decline of the European empires but also the rise of nations that these empires had attempted to subdue. The events that preceded and also occurred within this war are a great source of contention among historians throughout the twentieth century on just what motivated and caused these two nations into the bloody conflict. Authors Dr. Asakwa and Okamoto are two of these individuals who have debated this event as has been shown here. There is no real right and wrong to this debate, but merely who used fact and who used reasoning.

[1] Shumpei Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970), 126